


over and over again

by perhapssoon



Category: Splatoon
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Everyone Dies A Lot, F/F, High School AU, M/M, blood?? not rlly but there's ink??, i got inspo from the walking dead so that's the warning for the whole fic, lotta violence and disturbing stuff, zombie apocalypse AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2020-01-04 14:03:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18345155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perhapssoon/pseuds/perhapssoon
Summary: Aloha wakes up that morning in a cold sweat.He dies.He dies again.But he keeps waking up.





	over and over again

**Author's Note:**

> be sure to read the tags!
> 
> and this was a high school au but then i just went nah, screw that, let's kill everyone

He wakes up, drowning in his own sweat, phone buzzing relentlessly in time to his alarm. He grapples with the sodden sheets for a moment before finally grabbing his phone. It's Tuesday, 7:00 in the morning. Which means he has thirty minutes to get out the door.

After a quick breakfast, he opens the door to his friend, Straw, who is behind the wheel of her girlfriend's car.   
"Hey Aloha!" She revs the engine experimentally and Octoglasses, Straw's partner and Aloha's friend for four years now, shouts above the engine noise to stop ruining her car. Straw sticks out her tongue playfully and rolls her eyes at Aloha, who climbs into the passenger seat. "Don't worry about her; she's just grumpy she didn't get shotgun.

Octoglasses doesn't refute the statement. Instead, she slouches in her seat, groaning loudly. "Can we just hurry and pick up Scuba? School's gonna start in, like, twenty minutes."

"Chill babe," Straw replies, eyes on the rearview mirror as she accelerates and starts driving through the rural town. "We have plenty of time."

Scuba's already out front when they get to his house, that everlasting grin on his face as he walks up to the car and gets inside. "I was beginning to think you guys weren't coming."

"Shut up," Straw snorts. "You know how to drive yourself, don't you?"

"Do I now? I don't recall any arrangement saying I had to get to class alone."

Aloha silently grins at his friends' antics and stares out the window, Straw's terrible taste in pop music blasting in his left ear.

Something suddenly catches his eye on the end of the next block and he sits up straight, tugging at his seatbelt. "Wait, Straw! What the shell is that?"

Straw leans over him, squinting. "What? I don't see anything."

Aloha wordlessly points; there, staggering down the block, is an Inkling. Or, what he assumes is an Inkling. Their eyes are too sunken and pale, body barely holding together, ink paled vastly in comparison to normal, to be even close to an Inkling.

"Eww," Octoglasses says, nose scrunching. "What's wrong with them?"

Aloha bites his lip as the Inkling gets closer. He can see that they're slowly melting, head sinking into its head, hands trailing goopy ink over the sidewalk. He grabs Straw by her shoulders and forces her back into his seat, panic suddenly overtaking him.

"Drive. Now."

She guns the accelerator and they shoot down the street, music pounding in their heads as they near the school. They don't speak and instead sit there, surrounded by bass and the rumble of the tires.

"What was that, though?" Scuba says as Straw pulls into the parking lot, a general sigh of relief falling over the four of them. "It was like they were dead or something."

"I don't know, and I don't want to find out," is the reply from Octoglasses as she leaves the vehicle, letting the door slam shut behind her. "Let's just forget this all and get to class."

Aloha checks his phone and to his surprise, the clock shows they're at least ten minutes late. Maybe they spent too much time staring at that gross Inkling. "The bell rang already. We need to hurry."

They take off to the school, shoes slapping against the pavement. Scuba's in the lead and he reaches the double doors first, hand moving to the handles to pull them open. But before he can take hold of the doorknob, a loud noise rings out through the school. And it isn't the bell.

"What the--" Aloha stares in horror as screams echo around them, the doors in front of Scuba slamming open, sending him flying. A stampede of Inklings trample out of the school, all of them wearing expressions of utmost terror.

"Dude!" A sophomore by the name of Gloves skids to a stop in front of Aloha. "Don't go in there! There's some really gross shit in there. Like, uh," he pauses, trying to find a word to describe it, and Aloha frowns, getting impatient.

"Like what?"

His eyes light up, like he's just remembered. "Zombies! They're like zombies. So don't go in there, okay? It's shella creepy."

He dashes off, leaving Aloha alone in the middle of screaming teenagers. Scuba had managed to pick himself out of the bushes and made his way to his friend, Straw and Octoglasses following him. "Zombies?"

"Apparently." Aloha had only heard of zombies in video games or television shows, never in real life anyway.

"We gotta check it out." Octoglasses has her phone out, and she starts to the school, Straw grabbing her wrist at the last second.

"OG, girl, you can't go in there! Everyone just came out and they all seem pretty terrified. What if there are actually zombies?"

Octoglasses shrugs. "It could be a massive prank and you guys are missing out on a scoop. You guys don't have to follow me if you're chicken."

And with that, she heads into the building.

A second later, they hear a loud scream that undeniably Octoglasses'. 

"OG!" Straw rushes forward, running into the door with her shoulder, and disappears into the school. 

Aloha starts after her, glancing over his shoulder at Scuba who is lingering awkwardly at the foot of the stairs. "C'mon. We gotta go help her."

Scuba huffs, but follows. "If we die, it's your fault."

It's all said in a joking tone, but Aloha can't help but feel a sinking feeling in his gut as he enters the school.

The hallways are brightly lit, but empty, giving an eerie glow off the tiled floors. Straw and Octoglasses are nowhere to be seen.

"Straw?" His voice echoes off the walls as he moves further into the building. "OG?"

Scuba is beside him, hands fiddling with the tube attached to his mask, and Aloha feels grateful he didn't have to enter this place alone. It's his school, the one that is familiar despite all its flaws, so why does he feel so scared?

The farther they go, the colder it gets, the air blowing from the nearby vents becoming increasingly loud, like breathing. His heart rate speeds up, pounding in his ears, making him start to regret entering this place. "Straw?"

There's movement in one of the open classroom doors, and he freezes, throwing out a hand to stop Scuba.

They wait. And wait. After nothing happens for a bit, Aloha takes a tentative step forward.

And then the lights go out. 

Scuba vanishes from his side, there are shouts and screams, but he doesn't know whose voice is even echoing off the hallways, it's so dark and cold, a hand grips his wrist and pulls, goop trickles on his legs, clothes, hair, and something painful latches onto his arm and everything fades away.

He wakes up, drowning in his own sweat, phone buzzing relentlessly in time to his alarm. He grapples with the sodden sheets for a moment before finally grabbing his phone. It's Tuesday, 7:00 in the morning. Which means he has thirty minutes to get out the door.

He falls out of bed with a thud, the impact sending a wave of pain through his knees. What just happened? He was at school, with zombies, and now--

His hearts almost stop. Wait. Check the date.

It's the same day as it was when he woke up this morning. Or rather, it was like he restarted the whole day.

In a daze, he stumbles downstairs to where Straw is waiting, tapping her foot impatiently on the floor of Octoglasses' car.

"You done primping, Aloha?"

He nods, then shakes his head as he nears the car. "Listen, Straw." He's barely aware of how panicked he sounds. "Don't go to school."

"Woah, wait why?" Straw looks concerned. "We have exams today."

"Yeah, I know. Please." Aloha stares at her. "I just had this crazy -- actually it wasn't a dream but -- this crazy dream where there were fricking zombies and we all got caught at school and--"

"Slow down." Octoglasses appears in the side window. "What are you saying? Zombies?"

"Yes!" Aloha internally screams in frustration. What are they not getting?

"Sounds fake."

Aloha wants to scratch his eyes out. They can't be serious. "No, listen. You didn't see them. You weren't there. Or, actually, you were, but you died and--"

"You've been up to late playing those stupid video games, haven't you?" Straw looks mildly annoyed, though concern still tinges her eyes. "C'mon, get in. We're going to get Scuba and head to school. Then you'll know everything's fine. There're no such things as zombies."

He grits his teeth but climbs into shotgun anyway. The whole way to Scuba's house, he's jittery, unable to stare out the window or relax.

Scuba's standing in front like before, though his smile seems forced. "You guys sure took a while."

Straw snorts. "Yeah, cause Aloha had nightmares about zombies or something." She and Octoglasses laugh, like it's the stupidest thing ever, but Aloha isn't paying attention to them. He only can focus on Scuba's expression, which is slowly sobering by the second.

"I believe him." His voice cuts through the girls' laughter and they quiet immediately. 

"Wait, seriously?" Straw looks incredulous. "You actually believe him?"

Scuba shrugs. "If you don't, you guys can go to school. Aloha can stay here with me. My parents won't be home for another two weeks."

Aloha wants to cry in relief as he unbuckles his seatbelt and exits the vehicle. Thank cod. Straw and Octoglasses, meanwhile, only look confused.

"Okay. We'll give you your homework after school then."

And then they're gone.

Scuba then turns to Aloha, his expression full of questions. "You dreamed about zombies, right?"

"It wasn't a dream." Aloha knows this for a fact, but he can't explain  _how_  he knows this. "It was real. And we all died and I woke up again in the same time and day before it all started."

Without hesitation, he fills his friend in on what happened, and when he's done, Scuba looks disturbed. "That sounds pretty creepy," he says finally, shifting uncomfortably. "And you're sure you weren't dreaming?"

"Yeah." Aloha sees something move out of the corner of his eye and turns to point at it, eyes growing wide. "And I'm not dreaming that either, am I?"

There's at least five of those Inkling zombies there, staggering and lurching towards the duo in a mass of ink and loud groans.

"Holy carp!" Scuba leaps backwards, hand moving to grab a nearby rake as a weapon. "You weren't kidding."

"I wasn't." Aloha backs away too, swallowing hard as the zombies move closer. He doesn't want to die again. Not now. He picks up one of the random bricks lying about the yard and chucks one at a zombie, knocking its head clean off, ink flying from the impact. The body, now headless, falls into the bushes. 

"Urgh." Scuba grimaces as he swings the rake at another zombie, slicing it in half. "This is disgusting."

Aloha can't answer, because a zombie lunges out at him unexpectedly and plunges its teeth into his wrist. Pain shoots up his arm and he tugs his hand free, Scuba whacking the zombie back so it melted into a flower bed, sizzling. "Are you okay, 'Loha?"

Aloha examines his arm, already losing material. "You need to get out of here. Now."

"I'm not leaving you." Scuba looks insistent as he uses his rake to push back more Inkling zombies, eyes never leaving Aloha's face. "Doesn't matter if you're infected or not."

The gross consistency is traveling up his arm and taking hold of his shoulder. Aloha feels a wave of panic shoot through him as he struggles to hold himself together. "I'm not kidding. I could kill you. They all could." With his free arm, he gestures to the other zombies, and Scuba barely glances at him. 

"They could kill me," he says simply. "But you wouldn't."

The goop is on his neck now, cold and clammy against his skin as his eyesight turns blurry. He falls to his knees, barely aware of Scuba plunging the handle of the rake into a zombie's chest, making a loud schlorping sound. "Scuba--"

And that's as far as he gets before he wakes up, drowning in his own sweat, phone buzzing relentlessly in time to his alarm. He grapples with the sodden sheets for a moment before freeing himself. He doesn't lean over to check the alarm. He already knows what day it is.

This time, he doesn't confront Octoglasses and Straw, instead going on the same route to school, but he points out the zombie on the corner and suggests skipping school for the day. They all agree and Aloha has two hours of respite while hanging out at Straw's house before the zombies come knocking. Straw opens the door first and a zombie latches onto her, causing her to scream and her head to melt inwards. Octoglasses pries the zombie off with a poker from the fireplace, but gets bitten while trying to drag the now-infected Straw to safety. Scuba smashes a window for him and Aloha to escape, but the zombies grab Aloha's leg at the last second and drag him back inside the house.

He wakes up, drowning in his own sweat, phone buzzing relentlessly in time to his alarm. 

Another attempt at surviving the day goes until nighttime as he manages to convince Octoglasses and Straw that there are zombies and they find suitable weapons to fight, a baseball bat for Straw, some kind of weird machine made of a garden hose and a rake for Scuba, a bicycle chain and gear for Octoglasses, and Aloha gets his hands on the firearm that his parents keep in the safe in the basement. They spend the whole day bashing heads of zombies and recruiting non-infected Inklings to find weapons and create a base. At night, they find an abandoned car to sleep in and when zombies jump them in the middle of the night, Scuba guns the engine and they shoot down the street, where a cliff just happens to be waiting for them. It's either that or the zombies, and after taking a vote, Scuba launches the car into the abyss, grabs Aloha and kisses him harshly before Aloha wakes up, drowning in his own sweat.

They last longer each cycle, sometimes losing friends, like Straw to a stampede of rushing cars being driven by panicked students, or Octoglasses to a zombie wielding a chainsaw. Every single time Aloha dies, he always wakes up on Tuesday, 7:00am, thirty minutes away from the school bell ringing.

He starts to mess with each day, instead following through to school and tagging along with Gloves and his friends as they encounter more zombies at the end of the street. Their tires blow out and as zombified Inklings crawl into his lap and Half-Rim, one of Gloves' friends, slowly disintegrates into goo, Aloha wants to laugh because this is unbelievable stupid.

He tries calling in sick the next time, sparking the rest of his friends to join him and they stay cooped up in the attic, until zombies melt under the door and Octoglasses hurls herself out the window and falls to her death while the rest of them are stuck getting infected.

He hijacks the car next, taking over Straw as a driver and booking it out of the city. The zombies follow them a week later with makeshift weapons acquired from their schoolmates, and Aloha swears that he sees his friend Safari's half-smile before he wakes up in drenched sheets again.

Each day is just a repeat, with varied results because Aloha can't figure out how to make this nightmare end. If this is a dream, he's starting to doubt it. He's died a total of twenty times, either to accidental exposure to zombie goo, being bitten by an actual zombie, or had his head taken off by a zombie that was formerly one of his friends (and thus was granted the weapon they were infected with). His friends’ memories are erased with each cycle, unable to remember the previous deaths though Aloha knows now how to properly convince them of the threat that awaits them every time. He's close to giving up, though he doesn't know if he  _can_ give up.

So it's the twenty-first cycle that he wakes up sweating, picking up his phone and checking the date, despite his gut already knowing. He's going to survive this whole day; it may be the only thing that can break him from this spell.

He convinces Straw and Octoglasses easily, as well as Scuba, and the three of them quickly establish a base, using their phones to contact their classmates, warning them not to go to school and to find safe spaces to hide. They make weapons (again), and wire security cameras around Octoglasses' house to one of the guest bedrooms so they can monitor all entrances. Rider -- a senior and a rather aloof one at that -- and his friends show up at the door to help out and they spend half the day fortifying the house like a secret base.

Zombies show up right at lunchtime, and Bamboo, one of Rider's friends, climbs into the attic, hoisting a makeshift crossbow with her. Her girlfriend Blazer accompanies her and they shoot down the wave of zombies heading towards them. Aloha gets a call from Gloves, who had gathered the remains of his friend group at one of the nearby bars, along with Safari and two freshmen, defending themselves with nothing but alcohol bottles.

Scuba volunteers to go out to give them better weapons and Aloha tags along with him, the initial drive from the garage being unnaturally bumpy thanks to the puddles of zombie ink around them. 

When they arrive at the bar, one of the freshmen and Straps, one of Gloves' friends, have fallen and turned into zombies themselves. Scuba crashes the car into the door of the bar and bowls over about five zombies in the process. Gloves and the others come to the car, and Aloha can see that all of them are exhausted.

Scuba obviously notices it too, because he glances at Aloha. "Can they just come back with us?"

"Yeah." Aloha had long established himself as the person in charge. Even with Rider, who was a year older than him, and the other Inklings, he had run through this day enough times to pick out all of the zombies' weaknesses and though his friends didn't understand where the knowledge came from, they decided to roll with it.

But as Gloves opens the car door to get inside, Aloha sees something rather strange on his arm. "Gloves, did you get bitten?"

Gloves starts and stares down at his arm, which is melting, now dripping green ink. "No?"

Scuba shakes his head. "You got bitten, man. You gotta get euthanized or you'll be brain dead like that." He snaps his fingers, and Gloves shakes his head.

"No, no, I can't be bitten." He grabs his arm desperately, which only makes his other hand start to lose shape. "This can't be happening!"

"Get back!" Aloha warns the remaining Inklings, and as they back away, they watch as the drippy substance covers Gloves' shoulders, chest and head. Aloha reaches for his makeshift knife, but he isn't fast enough.

In one fluid motion, the newly zombified Inkling lunges forward and punches out the window of the driver's seat, sending shards of glass everywhere. Not-Gloves latches onto Scuba's arm and digs his nails into the skin, effectively transferring the goo to the other Inkling before Scuba manages to hack the zombie's head off. He stares at his infected arm. "Yeah, that's gotta do it."

With his free arm, he unlocks the door and stumbles out, waving Safari, Half-Rim, and the freshman into the car. "You'd best look away, 'cause this'll be ugly."

He then turns to stare at Aloha. "You wanna do the honors?"

The pink Inkling is frozen in his seat, partially because he had never done this in  _any_  of the cycles he went through already, and partially because he remembers what Scuba had said to him the first time he got infected, even if the other forgot.  _They could kill me, but you wouldn't._

He doesn't know if it was just a thing-of-the-moment, but Scuba is watching him with an expression of absolute trust, even as he walks over to his friend -- is he more than a friend? Aloha vaguely remembers that kiss before their car fell into the abyss -- his knife out and ready. Scuba had  _never_  died before him, not in any cycle, but why now? Did whoever was keeping him in this horrific loop want to taunt him for thinking he could follow through with this?

"C'mon, 'Loha, you can do this. I trust you." Aloha wants to cry and scream at the same time, because this isn't what he planned. He wanted to survive, yes, but preferably if everyone was still alive at the end. His hand holding the knife is shaking so violently, he has to hold it with both hands.

He raises the knife, and Scuba closes his eyes.

There's a flash of silver, a swishing sound, and a thud as his friend's body hits the ground, dissolving into a pile of ink. 

Aloha drives out of the bar with his eyes stinging and three Inklings in the backseat, not looking back despite his whole body screaming at him.

When he comes back to base, the front lawn is littered with goop, and he lets the others out of the car first when the garage door closes behind him. Straw and Octoglasses notice the lack of Scuba, yet they don't say a word.

Aloha doesn't know if that's worse than them acknowledging it.

The rest of the day goes without any deaths, as they have made the base so secure, it keeps out anyone who wants to try to break in. So now it's midnight and Aloha's staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep. If he goes to bed, would he still wake up in the same way? Would everyone be alive again? Would he go back to school like normal without the zombies?

Even with the anxiety rising in him every second, he somehow finds a way to drift to sleep.

 

 

 

.

.

.

He wakes up, drowning in his own sweat, phone buzzing relentlessly in time to his alarm. 

**Author's Note:**

> i had an actual ending for this but you guys should tell me if i need to end this properly or not


End file.
